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Comment by stego-tech | Hacker News Reader

This is a good story that taps into a lot of the systemic failings in America that hinder progress. Failure of the state to prioritize energy sufficiency over hypothetical mineral rights. Failure of utility companies to maintain their infrastructure to modern standards. Failure of governments to produce consistent and predictable business environments. Failure of bureaucracy to prepare creators and visionaries for success.

All of this results in good intentions being squandered because too many entrenched entities would lose too much hypothetical value on a balance sheet to just do something better for everyone.

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Its a good read but are his intentions unambiguously good? He had a windfall from crypto (ie contributing nothing to society). Then he was desperate to avoid paying the tax he owed on that windfall.

Is there any actual need for this Solar Farm in the middle of nowhere (that was only built there because of a tax scheme)? Are Texas ratepayers meant to cover the cost of the interconnect in their $/Kwh instead of him?

Better to just pay his taxes and move on, and leave the subsidies for an actual useful solar project.

EDIT: Oh and mineral rights are basically the original cryptocurrency/memecoin, so its somewhat funny that they came into play

These are all fair points.

The extra costs and limits are ostensibly because of safety. Yes, I know that engineers can game the system, but they're listing real reasons why the plant should shoulder the costs to the larger grid.

As a European three things stood out for me:

- He didn't consult with somebody who had any experience in planning such a project, but a person who - while maybe personally impressive - had zero experience and started by writing scripts to find suitable properties. Isn't the project already doomed at this point? You are looking to invest 7m USD, who will you consult for this?

- He wouldn't do the project unless he was able to get insurance for it. The whole issue of exploring and acquiring mineral rights was just to get insurance for the project. Why not forego insurance? EDIT: Okay, needed insurance for financing the project. I assumed the project would be financed through the crypto gains.

- From ballpark numbers his projected cost of 1,37 USD per Watt DC seems very high (~2 USD per Watt Peak AC). In Europe large scale PV has reached 600 EUR / kWp so building a 4.5 MWp plant should cost more like 3m USD rather than his projected 9m USD. Of course 4.5 MW is small (10000 panels) so this might be part of the issue.

AFAIK, because of protectionism (even pre Trump), US solar is much more expensive than elsewhere.

>"good intentions being squandered"

Relying on tax credits and otherwise "optimizing" tax payments and "good intentions" do not sleep well together in my opinion.

"Gambler attempts to convert lottery ticket winnings into clean energy to minimize taxes." is fine imho. It didn't work out, but if it had, the outcome would've been "good" and he still learned a lesson and shared with the rest of us. No different than a failed startup. You win or you learn.

Oh, I am in no way judging them personally. Just do not bring that "we are doing it for the humanity" BS into what is in an essence a pure gamble.

yes, but... if youre manufacturing plant with expected electricity usage, then build solar plant next / close to your manufacturing facility. or municipality or water treatment plant or .... build solar plant because you need electricity, do not build solar plant because you need money. same as with agriculture, it is nonprofit endevour, you are not getting rich from corn, you are rich from corn sirup, from tortillas... ( unless you are bill gates and divert tax breaks / subsidies away from agriculture and put them into your wallet instead, worsening situation forr every person inside of US borders )

solo solar plant are very weird edge case which was viable only because people with 20 years of schooling could not understand why is solar important, (after multiple oil crises ) so govs invested in this nonsense to speed up adoption. not because it was sensical thing. to open eyes to people that solar is working.

build solar as part of your corps supply chain. dollars are not goal, dollars are means for better life, stronger communities, better republic.

"Failure of the state to prioritize energy sufficiency over hypothetical mineral rights. "

where is battery ? so no this is not about energy self sufficiency, this is just pure only money endeavor. soft power here is not sane. also with battery you can get order of magnitude higher profit AND higher UTILITY, so there are multiple bad things in that endeavor.

The same goes for household solar. You don't put it on the roof because you think you'll make money from feed in tariffs, you do it to reduce your electricity bill.

People here in Australia expect feed in tariff to drop to nothing in the next few years, but electric prices are still climbing.

Our new government has promised battery subsidies as well, so I expect batteries to take off. There is a lot of money to be saved by time shifting all that sun that is wasted during the day until the evening when you get home.

or let me say it differently, my house needs as much energy to make it luxuriously comfortable in coldest of days, as my neighbors house loses just thru chimney, when there is no fire burning... ( he needs 50times more energy then me, but he is not comfortable, he wakes up into cold house )

there is insanely huge gap in peoples perception of reality, schooling failed many.

less energy i need, less energy we need to capture (new word for generate), transmit, curtail, store,.... my heat pump is smaller then heat pump in costcos meat refrigerator, so smaller device is easier, quicker to manufacture, less people, cars , cubic feet to store, transport,.... and all this effect from on freaking house.

or hurricane, tornado, flood disables grid in my area, my house will stay livable for 3 days until i have to put on sweater... or today, there is heat wave predicted, at least 10 people will die today,... why?

I'm so confused by the chimney thing, a nice wood stove which I assume your neighbor is using because it's not practical or possible to heat your house with a fireplace can get you 70-80% efficiency and run overnight. They burn clean enough that I can't tell when my neighbors (presumably always) use theirs and they're directly across the street. The whole neighborhood knows when I use my fireplace.

My neighbors who heat their houses with wood (in an area where you absolutely don't have to—we have gas and electric at extremely reasonable prices), both have the nice high efficiency stoves to take advantage of the Biden tax credit and it seems to work just fine for them. Cords of wood around here aren't free but damn close to it.

Source: I'm considering a wood stove for my garage for working in the winter and they both talked my ear off about their experiences.

that greyish blue haze around mountains is smog not fog. sometimes it is NOx from trees but most of times is from stoves

"they both talked my ear off about their experiences." stockholm syndrome . so they talked how good their stoves are. or they talked about how bad their houses are that they need to spend any amount of time on stove, cleaning, dust, moving wood,... if you have bad "circumstances" then any betterment in that circumstances is welcomed. but you can change circumstances altogether and not have to improve on lessening of abuse. you can live without abuse.

you burn to add energy into your house. better built house loses less energy so you need to add less energy. so you need less wood.

if im to put two logs into "stove", my house is 120 f in half an hour. if i had stove.

U/R value of materials

also someone will inhale your smoke, 100% all the time. their smoke. everyone smokes everyones smoke.

smoke does not go upwards towards mars. it goes little bit up then it will fall to ground and lurks 3-5 feet about ground and you inhale it. and im not even talking about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inversion_(meteorology)

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